The Atrocities of Neigh Chevaloshad
Neigh Chevaloshad has committed a few actions that have caused massive repercussions to the balance of Rook and its interactions with other city-states. This page is dedicated to listing these out, both to give future GMs plot hooks, and to allow them to help fix the myriad problems that have been created. Abandoned Encampments Since the creation of Neigh, he has dictated that every night he has existed as an adventurer, he's lived as a transient. Each night, he's generated a defensible encampment within 2 weeks of Rook using Stone shape and other instantaneous-duration magic. These encampments are challenging to find due to the naturalized method of creation and capable of housing a small group of individuals. After making use of an encampment, it is abandoned without being destroyed by Neigh, never to be used by him again. Instead, he moves to a new location, then generates another encampment. His intention was to help other travelers without access to such magic places to stay if they managed to find them. The result is that the only travelers that tended to find such locations were those that weren't looking for a bed for a night, but rather a staging point for their banditry. Of course, even more unsavory sorts have also taken to calling these abandoned camps "home," and most all of them are the sort that want to be near Rook, but not close enough to be seen by Rook. Neigh has confirmed the creation of approximately 680 encampments to which he's since abandoned. 57% (or 387) of these encampments have been declared to be currently in use by individuals described as above. If GMs feel like using one or more of these encampments as a plot hook, please list their use, and whether the group destroyed the encampment afterward to prevent future use. Use this page to track them. July 2015: Even after Neigh has been served legal documentation and told of this atrocity by multiple adventurers, he has chosen to let it continue unabated, for he requires the spell slots he'd need to fix it to continue his experimentation on small animals (see below). This atrocity has thus far killed an unknown quantity of individuals. Promised Soul to Daemon While completing a job in Abbadon, Neigh decided to pervert a ritual undertaken by a daemon in an attempt to guarantee he would be returned to life should he die whilst on that plane. The actual result is that the daemon now has a contractual tie to Neigh, which results in this outsider getting a relatively powerful soul to do as he wishes with it, should Neigh die. As a creature tied to the material plane, this can be used as a bypass to the world egg's dimensional lock. Since Neigh has not had time to further exacerbate this atrocity, none have died from it so far. Aggravated The Orashar-Cloud City War During a diplomatic session with two extremely powerful clerics of Cloud City, Neigh managed to vilify the diplomat and raise the alarm by randomly stating the Psionidari of Orashar are illithid without real provocation, without describing the current balance of power. This not only immediately halted the diplomatic session, but caused Cloud City to begin waging war on Orashar. Before the group's diplomats could convince Cloud City's legion commander otherwise, 50 of their front-line soldiers were slain by Orashar's defensive measures, and the remaining several hundred were being sapped and retrained by approximately 3 Psionidari. This was only found out after Orashar slipped several spies into Cloud City. One of these spies nearly killed the legion commander by replacing a scout. There were an additional 10 soldiers slain in the panic raised by them being potentially Psionidari spies, and though a truce was met, relations have only worsened as a result. This atrocity has thus far killed 60 individuals. The Great Panic During the advent of Nerull's resurrection, Neigh single-handedly destroyed Rook's diplomatic relations with most known governments, city-states, and nobles. This section is to describe how Neigh has destroyed these relations and who is currently affected by this. Backstory Upon eavesdropping through a solid wall on a private conversation between Naya and Ganderlay, Neigh decided to take his new-found knowledge and immediately set to creating a deposition to "help explain" the event to the masses. Knowing woefully little about what actually occurred during the event since he wasn't there, Neigh approached a Sphinx and had her write out the deposition using what he knew of the events. The result of this iteration of the deposition was a document simply stating that Nerull, god of murder, was resurrected by the adventurers of Rook known as Ben Weese, Naya Sharpe, Lorek Ra'adari, Varian Jaskas, Lisa Wayslay, and Primrose. Even though his original reason for creating this document was to help smooth over possible repercussions fom Diane's involvement, he decided to exclude the name of his horse from the list. This was supposedly an oversight. He then took this document to Rook, where he made several duplicates of the deposition and showed them to the other adventurers to get feedback. Their response of utter horror and immediately destroying the flyers, then threatening Neigh's life for creating such an abominable document was clearly a sign that the deposition was in perfect condition to be mass produced and sent out, at least in Neigh's eyes. He therefore took some of his hidden duplicates to a legal department in Rook, paying a fee to have it officiated by a judge. Neigh then declared that the document must be distributed to every person of power possible, and to keep his personal involvement as squelched as possible. The legal department did as much, sending it to the nobles, all council members, all potentially powerful correspondents and all diplomats within Rook, then distributed several crates of the flyers to all villages, city-states, countries, and potentially interested groups on Rook's continent or connected through the portal, all the while keeping Neigh's involvement more or less anonymous to all groups that received these notes. Neigh then had a sudden burst of clarity, remembering how his life was threatened by the group he just horribly defamed, and thus sought asylum within a temple to Desna before he could be confronted. He is currently under mandatory asylum/house arrest by the clerics of Desna, and under constant guard presence outside its walls. Impact There have been several effects of distributing a document that does nothing but blame 5 specific individuals by full name for the resurrection of a soul-eating god of evil and murder. By matter of association, Rook has also suffered greatly from the deposition. This is a list of groups currently confirmed to have had damaged relations from this event. * Cloud City: The deposition was a major contributor to the temporary deactivation of the Portal in Rook. Almost any progress with diplomatic relations with Cloud City have been heavily set back from the impact of the deposition. * Mount Possible: All gnome relations have immediately ceased after the distribution of the deposition. There have been no air ships or messages from the mountain. * The Kingdoms of Man: The Empire has actually slowed on its conflict with the Orcs, instead pulling their forces noticeably far away from Rook. They've ceased to communicate with Rook, and are assumed to be waiting to see the fallout and not wanting to be anywhere near it. * The Verdant Realm: The elves have cut off their diplomatic relations with Rook, with a high-ranking diplomat "confirming" the anonymous deposition by stating that it's possible for at least one of the listed individuals to commit such an act. It should be noted that all other city-states and villages have probably also been informed, and a majority of them will probably react in a similar manner. Orashar, having already known about this event for the most part, has squelched the distribution of the deposition on their side of the portal. This is a list of other events that have resulted from the depositions: * Riot of the Plow: A group of Rook's citizens with fliers in hand caused not only the destruction of Spellvis's treasured wagon as he heroically used it to help quell the riot, but four citizen and a half-orc adventurer enraged by the slander thrown the adventurer's way have now been added to the list of Neigh's victims. * Re-Ignition of the Interplanar Cold War: Among the nobles to which these papers were sent, the new incarnate of Apollyon happened to be one of them. He took this crate of depositions and distributed them amongst the outer planes. This has caused various groups to realize their masters and gods can be returned. This has ignited the otherwise cold war between the planes, as the many groups either want to kill the returned god, bring back their own, or prevent others from returning theirs before it's too late. This also has caused extraplanar entities to force their way through people to contact those listed on the deposition, which kills the conduit used in the process. This atrocity has thus far killed at least 7 individuals. Gross Irresponsibility with Minors While hiding under the guise of asylum in the temple of Desna, Neigh took the time to cast Awakening on his horse, Diane. His primary purpose to this was to make her the guardian and guide of all those tied to him, for he still feared that he'd somehow be connected to the various atrocities he's committed. He has since released his horse so it could attempt to live out its remaining life as an intelligent creature with the task of taking care of approximately 12 dependents. Awakening does not grant hands or a humanoid shape. This atrocity has thus far killed an unknown quantity of individuals. Forcefully Twisted Wildlife into Personal Army Immediately after being released from the Temple of Desna, Neigh's first action was to begin capturing birds and other small wildlife. Seeing these as a potential commodity, Neigh then began to experiment and twist these creatures to make beasts of burden. They are not horses or ponies, but rather a goat-like creature forced into the shape of an equine beast through application of Baleful Polymorph and probably grotesque experimentation. Baleful Polymorph is a permanent, transmutative spell which suppresses a creature's previous personality and replaces it with that of the creature it is formed into. This is unfathomably cruel to the victims of Baleful Polymorph, as it steals both their body and mind, for potentially years at a time if the effect is not purged. Neigh's solution to the potential dispelling of his actions has been to create too many to cleanse in a meaningful way. He has taken this two steps further by randomly casting Awakening on war horses primarily to serve him as intelligent, loyal minions, then having the horses and himself train the corrupt goat-horses to be ready for war.